[Fife Linux Users Group] Wireless Network Spanning Multiple APs

[James (njan) Eaton-Lee]

Probably not what you want to hear, but..

I'd definitely go with a few mid-end access points like the HP AP420 or 
cisco aironet 1100 that do WPA/Radius and then stick a couple of servers 
in the basement to act as firewall/radius servers. Much neater than 
anything decentralised, and if it's a small building you could do it 
with one box and then just do all the intelligent stuff there.

This way you can assure via the use of radius that only legitimate users 
use the system and can't circumvent bandwidth restrictions using IP/MAC 
changing/whatever, you can allow users to hop access points easily if 
they get dodgy reception / move around, and you make it really easy to 
extend your setup.

You can even (with the Ap420 or higher end cisco products) prevent 
clients from talking to each other at the access point level to prevent 
theft of service or clients using wireless bandwidth to share files 
without using up their bandwidth quota, if you want to.

The one disadvantage I can think of is that WPA (in particular WPA2) 
radius support is a tad limited..

  - James.

John A Thomson of Roundtrip Solutions wrote:
> Found this one:
> http://www.publicip.net/
>  
> Any thoughts or experience of using it? Seems an interesting project. This
> could work for my situation since we could just set-up download quotas for
> users and if they decide to burn it up on P2P then that is their problem! 
>  
> I should have given some background. Building is student accomodation that
> has multiple flats that have multiple rooms. At the moment each flat has its
> own broadband connection and AP. I'd like to move this to a load balanced
> broadband feed into a wireless network that has an AP in each flat (subject
> to survey).
>  
> Thoughts, comments and suggestions most welcome. 
>  
> 
> Many thanks and regards
> 
> John A Thomson 
> 
> Managing Director
> Roundtrip Solutions Limited
> 15 Freuchie Mill, Freuchie, Cupar, Fife KY15 7JL
> t: +44 (0)1337 858 826  -  +44 (0) 131 208 1826
>  <http://www.roundtripsolutions.com/> http://www.roundtripsolutions.com 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
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> 
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   James (njan) Eaton-Lee | 10807960 | http://www.jeremiad.org
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